The present invention relates to an interactive music generation system of particular use to non-musician performers.
The use of computers in generating music provides advantages unavailable in conventional instruments. These include 1) the generation of a very broad range of sounds using a single device, 2) the possibility of having a graphical display that displays effects correlated to the currently generated sound, and 3) storage and retrieval of note sequences.
The benefits of computer music have up until now been primarily limited to musicians having performance skills similar to those employed in playing conventional instruments. Although, non-musicians can be easily trained to use a computer-based music system to generate sounds, achieving an artistic effect satisfying to the user is difficult. Like its conventional forebears, the computer-based instrument is generally controlled on a note-by-note basis requiring great dexterity to provide quality output. Furthermore, even if the non-musician is sufficiently dexterous to control note characteristics as desired in real-time, he or she in general does not know how to create an input to produce a desired artistic effect.
One approach to easing the generation of music is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,078 issued to Chadabe. This patent discusses in great generality the use of a computerized device to produce music wherein some musical parameters may be automatically generated and others are selected responsive to real-time user input. However, in that patent, music generation is either entirely manual and subject to the previously discussed limitations or automatic to the extent that creative control is greatly limited. What is needed is an improved music generation system readily usable by non-musician performers.